mrmojorisin75

totally agree, one thing keegans methods plus a bit of money will get us is mid table to a euro place challenge...i've judged him as harshly as anyone so far since he came back but given a season he'll get enough results against average/bad teams to start building confidence and improving just have to stay up now, and i think we will albeit luckily

howay man, even i can tell you the answer to that robson had (allegedly/truly) lost the players, dyer refusing to play etc...etc... and souness was seen as a disciplinarian with a decent record (to shepherd, this is all from his perspective) blackburn being bottom 3 could be seen as a blip in his time there to an outsider like shepherd as he'd got them promoted and won a cup, back into europe and so on surely you can see that? time changes perceptions but i clearly remember the feeling during that period that the players needed "sorting out" there are your reasons, some sound some not so sound in my opinion...it's more a testament to the short-termism of shepherd that he did what he did shepherd is obviously not an idiot is he? the only multi-millionaire idoits are lottery winners...he just wasn't suited to running a football club - he was obsessed with winning a trophy (presumably to be the local hero) and i don't think you can underestimate the fact souness had previously won a trophy at EVERY other club he'd been to in the mans thinking the fact the blackburn fans were dancing about when we took souness tells it's own story but if ANYONE can tell me or show me that when we signed him they could have predicted just how badly he managed things then i'd be very, very surprised...i basically thought we'd end up mid table but sort out the little turds at the club like dyer, and maybe sneak a cup along the way you asked for freddies intelligent reasoning, not mine i might add I knew right from the off that that cockend would dragg us down the table. My pals will tell you how much i bitched on about the scotch slag. He was a plumb, his methods were old and outdated. You dont command respect from people by going around acting the hardman. i think what gets me more than anything about the appointment of souness was how much he was backed - to call his previous transfer record patchy would be doing the bloke a favour, yet he was afforded SO much money to piss away...this made less sense that appointing him! that's what galls me now...everyone can appoint a bad manager, and most generally do, but most don't leave clubs in the mess he did due to the money spent and wages agreed (what was the story recently, pre souness the wages were between 50-60% of turnover and OK, after he went mental it shot up to 72%!!) if he'd come in and been backed a bit, done his "disciplinarian" s***, then pissed off without us having been tarnished by the luque/owen/bounsoung deals i think the vitriol reserved for him would have been somewhat lower The board and chairman should also shoulder the blame for the Souness mess. They allowed the wages to escalate unchecked. And didn't Souness say recently that freddy was intfearing in his plans for team rebuilding. that's right aye, said he wanted boa morte for 5m, shepherd veto'd then got luque at 9m...could be blantant lies but oddly easy to believe don't think anyone comes out of that whole period with clean hands

howay man, even i can tell you the answer to that robson had (allegedly/truly) lost the players, dyer refusing to play etc...etc... and souness was seen as a disciplinarian with a decent record (to shepherd, this is all from his perspective) blackburn being bottom 3 could be seen as a blip in his time there to an outsider like shepherd as he'd got them promoted and won a cup, back into europe and so on surely you can see that? time changes perceptions but i clearly remember the feeling during that period that the players needed "sorting out" there are your reasons, some sound some not so sound in my opinion...it's more a testament to the short-termism of shepherd that he did what he did shepherd is obviously not an idiot is he? the only multi-millionaire idoits are lottery winners...he just wasn't suited to running a football club - he was obsessed with winning a trophy (presumably to be the local hero) and i don't think you can underestimate the fact souness had previously won a trophy at EVERY other club he'd been to in the mans thinking the fact the blackburn fans were dancing about when we took souness tells it's own story but if ANYONE can tell me or show me that when we signed him they could have predicted just how badly he managed things then i'd be very, very surprised...i basically thought we'd end up mid table but sort out the little turds at the club like dyer, and maybe sneak a cup along the way you asked for freddies intelligent reasoning, not mine i might add I knew right from the off that that cockend would dragg us down the table. My pals will tell you how much i bitched on about the scotch slag. He was a plumb, his methods were old and outdated. You dont command respect from people by going around acting the hardman. i think what gets me more than anything about the appointment of souness was how much he was backed - to call his previous transfer record patchy would be doing the bloke a favour, yet he was afforded SO much money to piss away...this made less sense that appointing him! that's what galls me now...everyone can appoint a bad manager, and most generally do, but most don't leave clubs in the mess he did due to the money spent and wages agreed (what was the story recently, pre souness the wages were between 50-60% of turnover and OK, after he went mental it shot up to 72%!!) if he'd come in and been backed a bit, done his "disciplinarian" shit, then pissed off without us having been tarnished by the luque/owen/bounsoung deals i think the vitriol reserved for him would have been somewhat lower

I see a chairman who doesn't understand football. That is all. Quite amazing you defend this season, tbh i'll take a leap from here and assume you're saying shepherd was one who did understand football? if that's not a safe assumption then ignore the next bit but he patently didn't fully understand football to me...he understood a certain amount of it, such as investing in building a new academy but not in investing in bringing the best scouts/coaches to the club so that we would have something coming out if it and ensuring continuity behind the scenes he knew about making a splash with big signings, but not the value of ensuring we had a balanced squad (i see this part as explaining the yo-yo-ing under his tenure) shepherd was very much a marquis (sp?) chairman in most repsects...talked the talk of a real madrid/man u chairman but wasn't able to fully walk the walk none of this detracts from our agreements about a lot of the positives he brought to the club mind you! one thing about mort/ashley too...it's said they're not football people, well to me "football people" if you like, have ran clubs for many many years and the continued dominance of a minority of clubs has been more or less ensured by that...maybe it's gonna take people like this with another perspective to come in and do something different - fair enough they may have been caught out this season but they shouldn't from now on, if they are then your criticism stands

howay man, even i can tell you the answer to that robson had (allegedly/truly) lost the players, dyer refusing to play etc...etc... and souness was seen as a disciplinarian with a decent record (to shepherd, this is all from his perspective) blackburn being bottom 3 could be seen as a blip in his time there to an outsider like shepherd as he'd got them promoted and won a cup, back into europe and so on surely you can see that? time changes perceptions but i clearly remember the feeling during that period that the players needed "sorting out" there are your reasons, some sound some not so sound in my opinion...it's more a testament to the short-termism of shepherd that he did what he did shepherd is obviously not an idiot is he? the only multi-millionaire idoits are lottery winners...he just wasn't suited to running a football club - he was obsessed with winning a trophy (presumably to be the local hero) and i don't think you can underestimate the fact souness had previously won a trophy at EVERY other club he'd been to in the mans thinking the fact the blackburn fans were dancing about when we took souness tells it's own story but if ANYONE can tell me or show me that when we signed him they could have predicted just how badly he managed things then i'd be very, very surprised...i basically thought we'd end up mid table but sort out the little turds at the club like dyer, and maybe sneak a cup along the way you asked for freddies intelligent reasoning, not mine i might add

bingo never quite understood the type of fan to pay good money for the match then sit and be a miserable get all the way through it? do it before and after but during?! mental...how many old farts/tosspots have we all sat behind who just sit and moan waiting for something to complain about? diabolical

We were never in the bottom three at this stage of the season, though, or as close to it if i remember correctly. 5 points from relegation last year is also a bit of a red herring as we were safe very early on and only then hit an awful run of form which saw us plunge down the table. I know personally this is the most concerned i've been about us actually going down in recent times, not that that is the core of the argument. Aye, we only won one of our last 11 games last year. But your season is 38 games innit. I reckon we've had our nighmare run over the last 12 or so games. have you honestly seen enough in keegans games to suggest we can get the points you're talking about? personally i've not, particularly away from home where we're the easiest of easy touches reading are turning the corner and i think will take at least a point from us, that leaves fulham and the mackems for me where we can realistically expect points at home...not wanting to be overly pessimistic but i can't see where any away points will come from, anyone we play will smell blood and go for the kill your optimism now mirrors the same around january when it was considered impossible we could even get to this point by many people, i like optimism but baseless optimism is no good to anyone My dear old mother always said to me that worrying about a problem has never solved it. And she was right. The amount of people on here going on as if we're already down is an absoloute disgrace. It compares only with the number of people saying the players have given up the ghost. If you ask me, fans get the players they deserve. Positive mental attitude man. The players are bound to fall apart with a crowd so nervous they're biting their nails rather than being the 12th man. Galvanise the players with unwavering support, rather than undermining them with constant criticism and boo's after we get beat off Man U-f******-nited. calm down there big fella, merely asked you a question you never answered agree about the booing etc... at the games, disgraceful, but discussion forums are something different entirely - if everyone just said "howay the lads" there'd be no point and i think we'll stay up, just not under our own steam Not directed at you mate, just picked a post to let my steam off in. I hate negativity. Despise it. I'm very negative on negativity. In answer to your question, I think the games against Bolton, Boro and and Blackburn showed we have got the players to match other teams that are goinfg to survive...and even chase Europe. It's unfair to ask if Keegan's team have shown that away from home when his only away games have been Arsenal, Liverpool and Villa (who we more than matched for 50 minutes to be fair). fair comment about the away games and where they were played, i just worry that kk hasn't altered his approach to something that's clearly not working the ease with which we're being cup open is terrifying, i fully expected him to do something tactically to try and arrest that at liverpool but if he did i didn't see it the smell blood thing is my biggest fear now - a team like brum will look at us coming and fancy it much more than they'd fancy playing anyone else at the moment

not at all, was just making a wider point that allardyce's approach away might have yielded more than keegans away from home - with this crop of players, being the important thing there used fulham as an example of a game being tight near the end and us winning it, when kev gets us anywhere near that in a game i'll use that

We were never in the bottom three at this stage of the season, though, or as close to it if i remember correctly. 5 points from relegation last year is also a bit of a red herring as we were safe very early on and only then hit an awful run of form which saw us plunge down the table. I know personally this is the most concerned i've been about us actually going down in recent times, not that that is the core of the argument. Aye, we only won one of our last 11 games last year. But your season is 38 games innit. I reckon we've had our nighmare run over the last 12 or so games. have you honestly seen enough in keegans games to suggest we can get the points you're talking about? personally i've not, particularly away from home where we're the easiest of easy touches reading are turning the corner and i think will take at least a point from us, that leaves fulham and the mackems for me where we can realistically expect points at home...not wanting to be overly pessimistic but i can't see where any away points will come from, anyone we play will smell blood and go for the kill your optimism now mirrors the same around january when it was considered impossible we could even get to this point by many people, i like optimism but baseless optimism is no good to anyone My dear old mother always said to me that worrying about a problem has never solved it. And she was right. The amount of people on here going on as if we're already down is an absoloute disgrace. It compares only with the number of people saying the players have given up the ghost. If you ask me, fans get the players they deserve. Positive mental attitude man. The players are bound to fall apart with a crowd so nervous they're biting their nails rather than being the 12th man. Galvanise the players with unwavering support, rather than undermining them with constant criticism and boo's after we get beat off Man U-f******-nited. calm down there big fella, merely asked you a question you never answered agree about the booing etc... at the games, disgraceful, but discussion forums are something different entirely - if everyone just said "howay the lads" there'd be no point and i think we'll stay up, just not under our own steam

That's the thing like. If he hadn't gone when he did the fixtures that were coming up would have seen him off anyway. very, very good points...still given the new manager didn't bring anyone new in we'd be no worse off would we?

yeah, we were more organised away from home particularly...if you're at 0-0 towards the end of game as opposed to 4-0 there's always the chance you might nick something a la fulham where we played like shit but got a bit of luck as it is we've been so far out of most games not even luck would help us

Boro have a worse run in that the mackems tbh, and on i reckon them or bolton will join fulham and derby boro is pretty bad - but there are 3 winnable games for them in there and if they win them they're safe regardless it'll be below 35 points to stay up this season... cardiff defeat yesterday might have a big impact on boro, if their heads drop and they start losing in the league i could easily see them not winning again

We were never in the bottom three at this stage of the season, though, or as close to it if i remember correctly. 5 points from relegation last year is also a bit of a red herring as we were safe very early on and only then hit an awful run of form which saw us plunge down the table. I know personally this is the most concerned i've been about us actually going down in recent times, not that that is the core of the argument. Aye, we only won one of our last 11 games last year. But your season is 38 games innit. I reckon we've had our nighmare run over the last 12 or so games. have you honestly seen enough in keegans games to suggest we can get the points you're talking about? personally i've not, particularly away from home where we're the easiest of easy touches reading are turning the corner and i think will take at least a point from us, that leaves fulham and the mackems for me where we can realistically expect points at home...not wanting to be overly pessimistic but i can't see where any away points will come from, anyone we play will smell blood and go for the kill your optimism now mirrors the same around january when it was considered impossible we could even get to this point by many people, i like optimism but baseless optimism is no good to anyone

wonder if (assuming we stay up) the board are stupid enough not to move in the market very fast at the end of the season? renewals have been dropping and the talk of not renewing increasing year on year...if we scrape up after this fiasco surely they must see they need to bring people in VERY quickly to get everyone motivated and excited again....farting about like we usually do surely ain't gonna cut?

in souness, roeder, and allardyce we somehow contrived to get ourselves 3 managers who combined the talents of shit signings married with an utter inability to put 11 players out on the field and get them to play football in a coherent way at any level i was a massive, massive critic of us appointing keeegan for the simple reason i thought he would be out of touch with the game and his experiences since leaving us the first time were hardly a confidence builder that said i've noticed enough improvement in the players to suggest this summer with a LOT, and i mean a lot of cash he'd make us a decent team again as a club outside of the "big boys" if you like, all you really need to do is beat the crap in the league - this is what robson got us doing and what every manager since him has failed to acheive, beat the shite and compete with those around you and you'll always be in with a shout of europe keegan can get us back there but he's not the man to progress any further after that

agreed, best fa cup since we were last anywhere near winning it...my hope is a cardiff-barnsley final, that'd be fucken mental!!!!

myself and few others mentioned this in january and my feelings haven't altered since then to now - we will not keep ourselves up; we don't have it in us to win enough games so we need others to be worse than we are presently that's not an easy feat as for WHEN we stay up i too am very optimistic, keegan will sign better players if he's given the money and we'll go back to being mid to upper-mid table pretty fast i reckon my fear is he won't have the balls/vision (call it what you like) to rip that squad apart in one summer so i think we'll be seeing the likes of barton/smith for at least another season...hope i'm wrong but the worst possible thing would be to go and sign the 5 players he's talking about and assume the shit we're playing now will improve as a consequence

A fundamental error that he quickly accepted he had made. I don't expect that you'll ever stop referencing it from now on though, probably applying it to everyone and anyone who dares to criticise the previous board. not the sort of error that people who know owt about the club would make, I suspect it was all just through eagerness to slate FS for something, or anything, which is the point. I've said the previous board made mistakes, they must have done, otherwise we would have won the European Cup. My point is that replacing them would be very difficult and so far the actions - or non action of Ashley and Mort, in particular the very definite feeling that they have operated a "sell to buy" policy is a very dangerous one and one that any board with ambition would not pursue, especially at the lower spending levels that we have operated at since they came. I think instead of claiming that I have a go at anyone who dares to criticise the board, people would be better off taking a more objective look at the current one, and look a bit more carefully at the facts I back up my comments with, which most definitely show that they in fact did a lot better than a lot of people claim. I suspect more than a few people may be realising this by now but just won't admit it. Edit. I have no intention of bringing this up with SJ again, now he has acknowledged his error, because you can't get fairer than that. Any fair minded person couldn't criticize the current board for their spending on players since they took over the club. I wouldn't have trusted Allardyce, a manager they inherited, to spend a large lump of my cash either. The time to judge the current board will be at the end of the summer transfer spending frenzy when their true intentions for the club will be known. Always assuming we stay up of course. NE5, you use the word a lot in your posts, could you quantify what you consider "ambition" in football, particularly with reference to NUFC what is ambition to you, i'm honestly interested Ambition ? Competing at the level we should be competing at. Buying the quality of players we should be buying. Setting high standards and seriously trying our best to win the trophies. Don't mistake this for saying we should always be breaking transfer records, Rob Lee and Barry Venison were 2 of the best pound for pound buys we've made in recent years, but we should be prepared to do it, just like the other top clubs do. And if it means outbidding the likes of Liverpool then so be it, after all we should be aiming to beat these clubs, we wil never be better than them if we don't have players that they want themselves. Included speculating in there. I don't accept a club like Newcastle should operate a "sell to buy" policy. Our fanbase is our guarantee, if a player comes along that we can't turn down then get him and make the sale later to accomodate him, not the other way round. i wholeheartedly agree with the "make it happen" approach to transfers...money talks and bullshit walks, i don't understand the newfound "we can't sign anyone" theory, it's bollocks, money makes it happen my fundamental problem with what you say is what you (and others) potentially consider ambition for NUFC now, in 2008... turn back the clock to how fast our ambition changed positively in the early '90's...seems to me nobody can accept the change to our diminished ambition now we have one hope for progress; the youth system that the board are talking about is implemented and comes to fruition over time, that's it...there's nothing else - the failure of the last board, to me, was to fail to identify they couldn't compete simply through finance and as admirable as their efforts may have been they were doomed to failure the fact is the established 4 will take a great deal of opposing and so far as i can see only villa show the potential to do it as they recognise their "limitations"..spurs will collapse under the weight of their own finances and expectation as we did money will have to play it's part as you point out but it's not the be all and end all of ambition I don't know mate. At the outset of the premier league and the brand new sky sports channel, the "big 5" who set out all the rules were Arsenal, Manu, Liverpool, Spurs and Everton. The untouchables. Within a matter of a few years we had gatecrashed them and were the only serious contenders to Manu for the title. Blackburn had won it. Chelsea were nowhere. Since then Spuds have dropped out for a long time, almost clawed their way back, and Everton too almost got relegated a couple of times and have now rebuilt. None of these 3 teams ie Spurs, Everton or Chelsea can stand on their own feet and match us for potential. Chelsea won some cups under Gullit/Vialli having made a breakthrough [something we just couldn't quite manage]. Abramovic has now put them into the ManU bracket, but it will only last until he pulls out. Things change. We have the fanbase. Forget these 40000 crowds that Villa get, Everton can get and Spuds can get. Forget even the 50000 crowds that Liverpool could get with a bigger stadium. If Keegan gets us back to where we were before, half the city will want to go to watch NUFC, just like the last time. Biggest mistake the Halls and Shepherd made, was not to go ahead with the threat to move from St James Park and build a bigger ground somewhere else, when the plans to build the stadium at Castle Leazes were turned down. all points taken but you have to accept that to compete financially in 2008 as vastly different from what it took to do so in the early to mid 90's? there's no getting away from that; take man u as an example, as team that had just won the title and had a team based on the back of 10+ years dominace felt the need to spend 50m on 3 players your point about everton/spurs etc... is a good one and it won't take much for us to catch them back up in a couple of years but look at spurs, they're throwing money around left right and centre and can't get near the CL as i said at some point the shepherd "regime", for want of a better word, should have recognised that money wasn't going to do it alone...our squads were frequently imbalanced yet supplemented with quality players who carried us for me the penny should have dropped, but didn't, under robson when we started signing younger players at reasonable fees who we then either moved on at profit or kept - we should have implemented this as club policy then to go hand in hand with our spending ability (much as spurs have done under ENIC) i see this as something mort/ashley have recognised hence all the moves behind the scenes that i find very encouraging...however if they don't match that ambition with spending power we'll be fucked for a very long time

true, i heard he's not got a scooby regarding precipitation the useless get laudrup (and many others) are of course intelligent footballers given the way we use that term, but think about it on the pitch; it's not like he gets the ball then freezes time, gets his notebook out and works out the best thing to do with the ball is it? he gets it and in a split second he's done whatever he's gonna do...this is what i'm saying, it's instinct in that respect, laudrup had the instincts (married with the ability) to be a great player by seeing what was happening on the pitch in a different, faster, better way than his peers you can't call that intelligence, you simply can't, it's just a term bandied about i've done it myself on the pitch...either had the instinct and not the ability or vice versa, all i'm trying to say is intelligent isn't the best word to describe players, makes no sense

Didn't Bobby Robson say the worst trainer he ever had was Romario? He was no Alan Smith like. nup he was a natural goalscorer, instinctive if you will I do admire your fight, it must be said. dude i honestly think we're talking about the same think...take your "intelligent" and replace it with "instinctive", there's no difference Apart from being completely the opposite. jesus who am i dealing with here? the words aren't opposites at all, but i see where you're coming from my point is i think we're talking about the same attributes in football(ers) but using two different words to describe them clear enough?

You've completely missed the point, as tends to be your way. The people debating the intelligence bit seem to be in complete agreement that Martins should be playing, possibly even as the first striker on the teamsheet. Nobody is currently using it as an argument of picking Owen over Martins, unless I've missed something? So what exactly are you going on about? The issue that myself and others have taken issue with is the fact that some people are claiming that Martins, while being the African Superman in his spare time, is an "intelligent" footballer. Which I assume to mean that he's got good decision making, good positioning, makes good runs off the ball and generally works in the interests of the team. I perceive the truth as being the same as what you've just posted, for the most part, about him being someone who will be frustrating, but who could still be more valuable to the side than anyone else. Read the posts before going off on one, man. Very irritating attitude some people have towards the guy. People will say Owen needs a partner with more strength and pace beside him because he is so pathetic in these areas, but won't say Martins needs a partner with more awareness and creativity to help get the most out of him. that last part is a very, very good point...

Didn't Bobby Robson say the worst trainer he ever had was Romario? He was no Alan Smith like. nup he was a natural goalscorer, instinctive if you will I do admire your fight, it must be said. dude i honestly think we're talking about the same think...take your "intelligent" and replace it with "instinctive", there's no difference titus bramble was not an "intelligent" footballer, you might say he was instinctive but he was still shit, his instincts were those of a moron

Didn't Bobby Robson say the worst trainer he ever had was Romario? He was no Alan Smith like. nup he was a natural goalscorer, instinctive if you will

what the f*** are you talking about? if intelligence was a factor we'd have more of the players you mention, the fact it's down to instinct is explained by the fact there are so few great players same in any sport, natural ability is what counts...some players can improve with training more than other some don't improve at all Great reply mate, the one of a beaten man. sign of a winner, never know when you're beat

You're a real 'cup half full' bloke, aren't you? he did ask